“Nothing short of a revolution. That's the only way to describe the public upheaval that took place this week. Nancy Pelosi has been fired, the Senate is far more balanced and President Obama was resoundingly rebuked. Republican governors could control upwards of 30 statehouses. That's what you call a consequential election.”
http://www.nypost.com/p/news/national/power_to_the_people_ZFhBUmh922iIp9Crxln8cO
“After an Election Day of Republican shock and awe, President Barack Obama awoke Wednesday to a Democratic political landscape that looked like Baghdad after the daisy cutters. Republicans picked up at least 60 seats in the U.S. House, enough to gain control with plenty to spare. The Democrats’ margin in the Senate was down to 51-46 with three seats still undecided.”
Republicans on the verge of winning nearly all 17 of the state legislative chambers they had originally set out for…..The GOP gains were most significant in the Midwest, where the party picked up state House majorities in Indiana, Ohio and Pennsylvania, and were within striking distance of capturing legislatures in the highly-prized electoral battlegrounds of Michigan and Wisconsin. But Republicans also gained control of both chambers of the New Hampshire and North Carolina legislature, and took the Alabama legislature for the first time since Reconstruction. Tuesday's GOP victory was the largest gain for either party since 71 Democrats were defeated in the 1938 midterms.
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1110/44574.html#ixzz14FPwVNqb
For the first time in more than a generation the GOP swept to control of both houses of the Minnesota Legislature.
The GOP may now have more power in the state legislatures than at any time since the 1920s.
http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2010/11/state_house_tsunami.html
These developments have national implications, especially for redistricting. Republicans now will play a role in redrawing the boundaries of a whopping 314 congressional districts. And lots of new Republicans in power in major swing states -- such as Ohio, Pennsylvania and Colorado -- will undoubtedly help foster a favorable climate for the 2012 GOP presidential contender.
http://www.sfexaminer.com/opinion/Republican-victory-was-wide-and-deep-1442653-106640883.html
Representative John Boehner, expected to be named the next speaker of the House of Representatives, vowed to repeal health care reforms pushed into law by the Obama administration.
South Carolina has its first black Republican congressman in more than a century.
http://www.postandcourier.com/news/2010/nov/03/scott-states-first-black-us-rep-in-a-century/
And Florida has its first black Republican Congressman since reconstruction.
http://www.wptv.com/dpp/news/political/allen-west-focused-on-being-good-congressman
Republicans smashed three glass ceilings by electing Nikki Haley in South Carolina, Susana Martinez in New Mexico, and Mary Fallin in Oklahoma, and added another dash of diversity with Latino Brian Sandoval's Nevada win.
Voters in Arizona on Tuesday approved Proposition 107 banning the consideration of race, ethnicity or gender by units of state government, including public colleges and universities. The measure had just under 60 percent support in unofficial state results. Arizona joins California, Michigan, Nebraska and Washington State in imposing such bans.
http://www.sanfernandosun.com/sanfernsun/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=5962&Itemid=2
Three Iowa Supreme Court justices lost their seats Tuesday in a historic upset fueled by their 2009 decision that allowed same-sex couples to marry.
http://www.desmoinesregister.com/article/20101103/NEWS09/11030390/Iowans-dismiss-three-justices
Washington state voters rejected a ballot measure to impose an income tax, which failed 65 percent to 35 percent.
Oklahoma voters approved a measure that would forbid judges from considering international law or Islamic law when deciding cases. Republican Rex Duncan, the sponsor of the measure, called it a "pre-emptive strike" designed to close the door on activist judges…
http://www.newsok.com/article/feed/208677#ixzz14GNu7QTn
Voters have defeated Rep. Patrick Murphy (D., Penn.), the primary sponsor of legislation to repeal the so-called “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy. Voters also rejected Senate candidate Joe Sestak, another Pennsylvania Democrat and a retired Navy admiral, who had wanted to be the primary sponsor of what became Murphy’s bill.
http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/252507/gays-military-losing-cause-elaine-donnelly
There were also some disappointments;
Dino Rossi has conceded to Patty Murray
http://www.dinorossi.com/rossi-statement-on-washington-state-senate-race/
Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., beat back challenger Sharron Angle and retained his post as the majority leader, he may have violated federal law to do so.
In a blast from the past, California voters bucked the national voting trend and returned Democrat Jerry Brown to the Governor's office he occupied in the 1970s. While the Attorney General votes are still being counted, all other statewide offices went to Democrats. Voters also removed the two-thirds vote requirement to pass the state budget, handing the heavily Democrat state legislature a blank check. California is now a one-party state. The voters want it that way. Last Tuesday, California voters refused to suspend the state's first in the nation cap-and-trade global warming law, paving the way for skyrocketing utility rates
http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=39773
Only on the marijuana initiative did California voters show some sense:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/us_marijuana_legalization
Go figure. “Conservative Christine O’Donnell carried the tea party voters. She bested the bearded Marxist with independents. But, she did not carry enough REPUBLICANS to win in Delaware tonight. What an absolute shame.”
President and Mrs. Obama party on. President Obama’s trip to Mumbai, India will cost $200 million per day. His retinue includes 3,000 people including Secret Service agents, US government officials and journalists, 40 aircraft, and three Marine One choppers…He has reserved the entire Taj Mahal Hotel. All 570 odd rooms, banquet halls, restaurants, etc. In addition to hundreds of rooms in other 5 star hotels around Mumbai. He will also be protected by a fleet of 34 warships, including an aircraft carrier.
http://www.ndtv.com/article/india/34-warships-sent-from-us-for-obama-visit-64459?cp
“Probably not since the days of the Pharaohs or the more ludicrous Roman Emperors has a head of state travelled in such pomp and expensive grandeur as the President of the United States of America.”
President Obama’s trip to Indonesia will include a visit to the country’s largest mosque in Jakarta.
http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/obama-plans-visit-indonesian-mosque-amer
President Obama tells 60 Minutes, it’s not his policies that were rejected, it was his failed communication skills.
“Mark Penn, Democratic strategist and former chief strategist for Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign…noted that it took the Oklahoma City tragedy in order for President Clinton to “reconnect” with the American people. He then (said) that President Obama needed a “similar event” to achieve that reconnection following his party’s midterm losses.” !!???
After more than 15 years of conservative talk radio, 570 KVI will flip to an oldies music format next week. Fisher Communications, parent company of both KVI and KOMONews.com, said the station will become "Seattle's Greatest Hits 570 KVI" starting Monday, Nov. 8.
http://www.komonews.com/news/local/106489348.html
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THIS WEEK’S FEATURED COLUMN
John Hayward 10/31
It is often said the people of America are her heart and soul. It’s important to understand that they are also her mind. The mind of America is an unconscious engine of fantastic power and perception. Its nerve endings reach through every cash register and cell phone. Its dreams swell into factories and skyscrapers, burn themselves into circuit boards, and flow across bookshelves.
The mind of America can hold many different ideas at once. The genius of a farmer may not be applicable in the heart of a city. A business plan that brings riches to a company in Wisconsin might be a dismal failure in South Carolina. The desires of vacationers and retirees along the coast of Florida are different from those of old families with deep roots planted in the soil of Illinois. A garage mechanic from Detroit might become a business tycoon in Seattle. The notion of bottling so much diverse energy into a central plan, designed by politicians, is absurd. The high voltage of the American mind will melt any antique machinery Washington plugs into it. Not every idea produced by our vast intellect works out. We learn from our failures, and from those of others. One man’s error is another man’s opportunity. A failed business releases market share for others. When the government steps in to halt this process, terrible amounts of wealth are siphoned away. The mind of America does not willingly waste its energy on the madness of unsustainable business models, propped up by government subsidies.
We make sense of things through the assignment of value, a far higher order of perception than crude ideology. Money is a measure of our time, which means the value we assign to goods and services measures the portion of our lives we are willing to invest in them. We do not voluntarily invest our time in useless goods or fruitless pursuits.
The laws of supply and demand are obstacles to the statist, who constantly seeks to repeal them … but they liberate individuals, by allowing us to find the best value for our money, and to secure the best compensation for our labor. Americans express their will through the logic of free markets. Respect for supply and demand eliminates waste, which is the source of poverty.
Ambition is the coin of the realm between free men. It is the natural genius of the American mind to respect the ambitions of individuals and to create productive ways to fulfill them. The contrary madness imposed on us by statist government is the notion that politicians can measure and judge ambitions, pronouncing some noble and others venal … while harboring none themselves. We know this notion is ridiculous, and we drive ourselves insane if we try to accept it. When ambition is replaced by obedience, we all become poorer, for ambition is a far more valuable resource. We are unwise to deprive ourselves of the achievements of extraordinary people.
Our free-market intellect adapts and innovates at a pace no bureaucracy can hope to comprehend. In the time it takes calcified government agencies to mix objective reality with the interests and prejudices of the State, and to produce politically acceptable regulations, the free market has already evolved through generations of production and improvement. Individuals express their demands, creating and dissolving fortunes, while the bloated organs of the State pump out another thousand-page bill that nobody bothers to read. Consumers have the undivided attention of producers who seek to win their business. Meanwhile, the State carries on a dreary argument with itself, and expects us to hang on its every word.
Look around you, and behold the awesome power of the American mind at work. On the shelves of your local grocery store, “adequate” is never good enough. Your pharmacy awaits its next shipment of miracles, conceived and produced by corporations that are savagely denounced when their risks lead to reward. Look carefully at a shopping mall, and you will see a hurricane of priceless data arising from the checkout counters, allowing merchants to adapt to the desires of their clientele in a matter of days. Marvel at the magic of the voluntary transaction, in which both parties become richer, and nothing is “redistributed.” Bathe in the chaotic genius of a mind created by millions of free choices, and laugh at the folly of anyone who thinks that a little band of “experts” in a faraway city stands a chance against it.
Freedom is righteous, and it is also brilliant. Statists and their hollow promises are tedious, but I can’t wait to see what the free people of the United States dream up next.
http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=39666
Another good read:
“America has the Second-Greatest Generation to thank for repelling the socialist agenda of the Obama regime and resetting the course of American history back to the course of greatness……To paraphrase Obama, "We won!" Battle lines have been drawn, and we will continue to draw more. We won't allow Republicans to fight as they have in the past, which is like sissies. There was already evidence of it when Boehner spoke after the beat-down and asked for us not to gloat. Whatever. Gloat to your heart's content. Go talk trash at the water coolers at your offices the same way the Left did when Obama was selected. Tear down the goal post, cut down the net, throw your headband into the audience, and take a victory lap. Stand at home plate and stare as the ball sails over the wall then out of the park. You deserve it! That's what winners do. This is our time to remind the Left that they got the car out of the ditch, only to drive it off the cliff. So no more car for them. The ghost of Ronald Reagan will do the driving for a while.
http://www.americanthinker.com/2010/11/the_ghost_of_ronald_reagan.html
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FROM OTHER COLUMNS
“The Republican congressional sweep in 1994 promised to shake up the way things had been done for decades, and the new majority delivered in the early years. By 2006, Republicans lost their way. Instead of standing on principle, most devolved into business-as-usual politicians desperate to retain office by spreading around the public's money in earmarks and other pork. They lost sight of why they went to Washington in the first place, and their fall was inevitable. When the contest is over who can spend the most, Democrats are going to win every time. Republicans who run on a message of fiscal restraint have a chance because Americans realize families and individuals will be the ones paying for the government's spending spree for decades to come. That's why fiscal conservatism has now carried the day. Should the new Congress hold true to the principles of limited government, Republicans will build upon a lasting majority as future ballots are cast for them, rather than against their opponents."
-The Washington Times
"Democrats will spin Harry Reid's victory and cling to it like the American people allegedly cling to their Bibles and guns, but I see a huge silver lining here for conservatives. ... Yes, Reid would have made a great trophy on the GOP's mantle. But cheer up: He's even better as a leader of Senate Democrats -- depending on your point of view."
-Stephen Spruiell
"The Constitution cannot protect us and our freedoms as a self-governing people unless we protect the Constitution. That means zero tolerance at election time for people who circumvent the letter and the spirit of the Constitution. Freedom is too precious to give it up in exchange for brassy words from arrogant elites.”
-Thomas Sowell
"We make a great mistake if we believe that ... these results are somehow an embrace of the Republican Party. What they are is a second chance, a second chance for Republicans to be what they said they were going to be not so long ago."
-Senator-elect Marco Rubio (R-FL)
"President Obama listed his accomplishments in office on Urban Radio Tuesday. No one gives him enough credit. Barack Obama took something that was in terrible shape and brought it back from the brink of disaster, and that something was the Republican Party."
-Argus Hamilton
"For America's ruling class, the scariest day of the year [wasn't] Halloween, but Tuesday -- the day we all dress[ed] up as American citizens and cast our ballots."
-David Corbin & Matthew Parks
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BOOKS, FILM
“Fed Up!: Our Fight to Save America from Washington” by Gov Rick Perry of Texas. Rush Limbaugh says, "Rick Perry has hit the proverbial nail on the head in FED UP!, making a powerful case for a return to limited government and the restoration of the proper balance of power between Washington and the states. As Governor of Texas, he has seen firsthand the greatness of America and the prosperity we can enjoy when we empower people and get government out of the way. He explains in detail the historical, constitutional, and practical reasons why a government closest to the people protects liberty, and lays out the path to right the ship - citizen involvement and engagement to hold politicians accountable. No citizen should skip this book - your future depends on getting this right."
Here’s Gov Perry’s previous book: “On My Honor: Why the American Values of the Boy Scouts Are Worth Fighting for” Texas governor Perry takes dead aim at the moral relativism of the secular humanist movement, indicting its corrosive impact on the culture. Examining the left's legal assaults on the Boy Scouts of America - which span more than 30 years - Perry offers prescient insight into the multi-faceted war, which pits the proponents of traditional American values against the radical leftist movement that seeks to tear down our social foundations.
“Courting Disaster: How the CIA Kept America Safe and How Barack Obama Is Inviting the Next Attack” by Marc A. Thiessen. Former Vice President Dick Cheney says, “Marc Thiessen knows, in ways that few others do, just how effective, heroic, and morally justified were the interrogators who kept this nation safe after 9/11. If you want to know what really happened behind the scenes at the CIA interrogation sites or at Guantanamo Bay, you simply must read this book. It reveals how we foiled potentially devastating terrorist plots, and how the current administration is putting us at terrible risk by its misplaced liberal grandstanding.”
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LEFTIST WATCH
Liberals don't want to believe that anyone would oppose the Obama agenda out of a principled stand against massive government spending and massive intervention in the free enterprise system. It's easier (and dirtier) to blame it all on racism. The leftist blog Daily Kos is keeping up that smear: "It's the black man in the White House, stupid." Michael Moore truly thrilled the blogger called "blackwaterdog" by claiming "Two years of a black man who secretly holds socialist beliefs being the boss of them is more than they can stomach.”
http://newsbusters.org/blogs/tim-graham/2010/11/02/daily-kos-blame-dem-losses-racism
New leftist crusade, “food justice.” San Francisco's Board of Supervisors voted 8-3 last week to declare Happy Meals illegal. Time was, champions of economic freedom would have been accused of alarmism by big-government adversaries for suggesting that such a thing lay in the future. Today, the future of massively meddlesome government has arrived. “Apparently, "food justice" is nothing more than taking toys from kids. You could call it No Child's Toy Left Behind.”
http://www.investors.com/NewsAndAnalysis/Article/552972/201011051901/Food-Justice-In-Frisco.htm
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ISLAM
Many Mauritanian women and their families are now stipulating monogamy as a prerequisite before marriage, but religious scholars have condemned it as a violation to Islamic teaching.
http://www.alarabiya.net/articles/2010/10/31/124364.html
Reports of secret hangings and mass executions in Iranian prisons raised concerns among human rights groups about undeclared abuses committed in the world’s second biggest executioner after China.
http://www.alarabiya.net/articles/2010/10/31/124378.html
Saudi Arabia's top government-sanctioned board of senior Islamic clerics has endorsed a fatwa that calls for a ban on female vendors because it violates the kingdom's strict segregation of the sexes. The powerful committee said in its ruling that “the mixing of sexes is forbidden and women should not seek jobs where they could encounter men.”
http://www.stuff.co.nz/world/middle-east/4293914/Fatwa-bans-female-vendors
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ARTICLES
George Will: Actually, as the distilled essence of progressivism, (Obama) should feel ratified by Tuesday's repudiation. The point of progressivism is that the people must progress up from their backwardness. They cannot do so unless they are pulled toward the light by a government composed of the enlightened – experts coolly devoted to facts and science. The progressive agenda is actually legitimated by the incomprehension and anger it elicits: If the people do not resent and resist what is being done on their behalf, what is being done is not properly ambitious. If it is comprehensible to its intended beneficiaries, it is the work of insufficiently advanced thinkers. Of course the masses do not understand that the only flaw of the stimulus was its frugality, and that Obamacare's myriad coercions are akin to benevolent parental discipline. If the masses understood what progressives understand, would progressives represent a real vanguard of progress….
http://www.ocregister.com/articles/ideas-95041-ocprint-democrats-people.html
“The peasants will be driven no farther. This week, they voted an entire worldview dead. Not that it will simply lie down, zombie doctrine that it has been for a century or more. It will have to be beaten down, drawn, quartered, and burned, with the ashes scattered to the winds. The process will require years. But the old, failed paradigm has been given a death blow. American eyes have opened at last, and they will not close again. Plenty of battles remain, but it is safe to believe, in the words of one of the great modern conservatives, and Democrats, in the true sense: "Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning."
http://www.americanthinker.com/2010/11/tuesdays_election_was_a_vote_t.html
Two Republicans, newly-elected Marco Rubio in Florida and re-elected Jim DeMint in South Carolina have already said exactly what the Beltway Republican establishment needs to hear. Rubio: "We know that tonight, power in the House of Representatives will change hands. We know that a growing number of Republicans will serve in the Senate as well and we make a grave mistake if we believe that tonight these results are somehow an embrace of the Republican Party. What they are is a second chance." DeMint: "These Republicans know one thing: If they don't do what they say this time, not only are they out, but the Republican Party is dead, and it should be."
http://jewishworldreview.com/1110/ahlert.php3
Marco Rubio really scares Democrats… and not just in Florida…..He is not just a conservative, but one of the most articulate and persuasive conservatives of his generation.
http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=39714
The insurgent conservative Republicans and Tea Party candidates elected Tuesday are obviously a pugnacious and determined bunch, but they're not the only ones fixing for a battle over the direction of the party. The Republican Beltway establishment and the K Street wing of the GOP are ready to fight any effort to end pork-barrel spending and kill corporate welfare. The first fight will come mid-November, when the newly elected senators join returning senators to set party rules for the next two years. Sen. Jim DeMint will propose to ban earmarks by GOP senators.
Top Republicans in Washington and in the national GOP establishment say the 2010 campaign highlighted an urgent task that they will begin in earnest as soon as the elections are over: Stop Sarah Palin. Interviews with advisers to the main 2012 presidential contenders and with other veteran Republican operatives make clear they see themselves on a common, if uncoordinated, mission of halting the momentum and credibility Palin gained with conservative activists by plunging so aggressively into this year’s midterm campaigns.
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1010/44449.html
“The core value of civility is the concept of a fundamental respect for the opposition’s right to be heard. One of the most blatant violations of the canons of civility in recent years has been the persistent effort to defame conservative policy prescriptions, groups, and movements as toxic, pathological, and unworthy of public standing. We are seeing it happen once again in the sneering treatment of the Tea Party by reporters, pundits, and politicians, as well as, most lamentably, by the president of the United States himself. This is just another example of the persistent compulsion on the part of American liberals to write self-aggrandizing and self-defeating obituaries for ideas that remain stubbornly, persistently, and vigorously alive.”
Bernie Goldberg: “So let's review: As far as liberal journalists are concerned, when the American people vote for Democrats, it's because they're full of hope and want positive change and care about their little kiddies. And when they vote for Republicans, it's because they're angry, stupid and irrational. Good thing there's no such thing as liberal bias in the media.”
http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=39756
As of three days ago I was a diehard liberal Democrat. I followed the trumpet call and marched in lockstep with whatever was declared to be true by the liberals in my family, all my friends and particularly my professors in college. There was no other choice a sane person could make and those who were "conservative" were no more than bible thumping fascists and greedy capitalists who just wanted to exploit all of us……Last Tuesday, Oct 26, someone at my office left a copy of an article on my desk entitled "Socialism and Reality" by Steve McCann. At first I was going to throw it away as it originated on a far-right wacko internet site (as had been told), but the lead caught my attention so I read the article. As I finished the last paragraph a sense of dread began to flow over me as I thought, my God this makes sense and I had never thought about these points written in such a clear concise and logical manner….
http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2010/10/conversion.html
“Socialism and Reality”: The images on the television screen emanating from Europe are a sobering reminder that socialism has failed wherever it has been tried and will always do so despite the best efforts of the die-hard true believers. The riots in the streets of France and Greece, the announced layoffs of nearly 500,000 government employees in the United Kingdom, and the potential national bankruptcy of Ireland, Spain, Italy, and Portugal are the current face of this failure.
http://www.americanthinker.com/2010/10/socialism_and_reality.html
Court watchers are saying that the response by 9th circuit Federal Judge John T. Noonan to the DoJ brief on the suit against the AZ immigration law might have doomed it before the case has been heard:
http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2010/11/doj_suit_against_az_immigratio.html
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NOTEWORTHY WEBSITES
Do you hear the people sing?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FmaTNf4YhEs
Three charts.
Ray Stevens, “Throw the Bums out”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q59ZcFguUOo&feature=player_embedded
Governor’s races:
http://www.cbsnews.com/election2010/gov.shtml
Senate results:
http://www.cbsnews.com/election2010/housesenate.shtml?type=sen&tag=contentBody;quickLinks
House races:
http://www.cbsnews.com/election2010/housesenate.shtml?type=house&tag=contentBody;quickLinks
RightChange.com is a non-profit political organization with the mission of holding America’s elected leaders accountable for their actions on our founding ideals:
Rare photos taken by a German soldier of the devastated beaches of Dunkirk after the evacuation have been found 70 years later by the family of a British war veteran. The pictures were taken a few hours after 330,000 Allied soldiers were rescued from the beaches…
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WISE WORDS
"All men having power ought to be distrusted to a certain degree."
-James Madison
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